Is there no end to this woman’s talents? Well, in the case of Zaha Hadid, a grinding halt seems to have been reached with the eminent architect’s flirtations with fashion. Hadid has long pushed the boundaries of her considerable talents, with credible adventures into furniture design and oil painting, but her latest swimwear range for Viviona shows that sometimes even the deepest wells can run dry.

Architects have long been obsessed with fashion. The most celebrated architect of the 20th century, Le Corbusier, treated the sartorial side of his life with the utmost seriousness. His tailored suits, bow ties and, of course, his trademark spectacles define much of what we think about him today. The famed Austrian architect, Alfred Loos, was enamoured with Savile Row suits and was clearly something of a frustrated tailor at heart. In amongst his renowned architectural musings he even wrote an essay: “Why A Man Should Be Well-Dressed”. But while Loos did design some fashion boutiques in early 20th-century Vienna, he never went as far as actually designing his own clothing.

Why, then, do today’s architects feel the need to take the next step from simply having a healthy relationship with their wardrobe to actually getting their hands dirty and getting involved in design? Hadid is well known for her ability to pick out an outfit – indeed The Guardian recently listed her as one of Britain’s best dressers – so why not just leave it at that? To answer that question, it might be worth taking a look at the other architects who have recently turned their hand to fashion.

Richard Meier is an architect whose crisp, white buildings are reflected in his unchanging appearance in crisp, white shirts. Rumours have often circulated that only shirts of the whitest white are allowed to be worn by his employees – and even then they have to be set off with only black trousers or skirts – but this is surely an exaggeration of the truth. It does, however, give a hint that appearance is not just important in buildings for Meier, but also in the way we dress. His cashmere and cotton cardigans for Lutz & Patmos come in, unsurprisingly, white and black but there is also a third colour available – cement. The ladies version is described as having a “self-belt and architectural ribbed waistband” – what this means I am not entirely sure but I suspect it is just a way of Lutz & Patmos emphasising the fact that they have hired a celebrity architect.

Frank Gehry is another architect who has dipped his toes into fashion – or more correctly speaking his entire foot as it was a range of boots that he created for the French men's shoe-maker J. M. Weston. Described as “the encounter between a 19th-century dandy and a Sixties mod”, the boots speak little of Gehry’s skills as an architect (and much more, it might be said, of his deficiencies as a fashion designer). Never one to be afraid of being blunt, Gehry said at the time of the shoe launch that “architects create brand names now… in the same way they do with movie stars. Purists out there probably find the idea of my designing a shoe abhorrent, but I don’t know why. We’re going back to the renaissance model, in which artists could work in any discipline.” In other words, Gehry is unashamedly trading off his status as a celebrated cultural figure to create some spin-off product – something that Le Corbusier and the like would never have had a chance to do.

Hadid, who takes fashion so seriously she is rumoured to have commissioned a custom-made app to help her to coordinate her enormous personal wardrobe, might not take kindly to such a cynical description of her swimwear. While she has doubtlessly poured some considerable passion into the project, however, there is no one out there who is going to call it her finest work. If you want to see that you need to head to Azerbaijan to see the Heydar Aliyev Centre or her celebrated Aquatics Centre in London. Much like Hadid would surely advise a fashion designer, such as her close friend Donna Karan, against designing significant civic buildings, shouldn’t her friends also be dissuading her against any activities on the catwalk?